The regulatory and technological stars have aligned for the benefit of all as the move to real-time treasury operations promises to deliver unparalleled efficiencies and insights that banks and treasurers once only dreamt of.

The rosier outlook gives central banks a chance to return to more traditional policies after endless cycles of easing. The US Federal Reserve (Fed) is likely to stick to its plan of slowly increasing interest rates, and the European Central Bank (ECB) could follow suit.

Global Finance magazine's anniversary special issue on Innovation includes our awards for top Innovators in Finance of 2017, as well as a look back at the top innovations of the last 30 years and a look ahead to what the future of finance portends.

Ebay leaders Meg Whitman, Bill Cobb, and Rajiv Dutta at an eBay Live event in 2007. Photo by eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. Ten years before Jeff Bezos left a New York hedge fund to start selling books over the Internet ...

Although its successes have been less far-reaching than hoped by some of its proponents, it does provide a response to the challenges to helping the impoverished gain access to financial services to increase their incomes and financial stability.

​ Professor Michael Greenberger testifying, in 2010, at a Congressional inquiry into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. The 1980s ushered in an era of exotic financial products that were hailed for fostering new ways to manage risk.

Processes that have changed relatively little over hundreds of years in trade finance are being catapulted into the 21st century, due to significant advances in data analytics, digitization and shared ledger technology. Once a forgotten backwater of transaction banking, trade ...

Starbucks generates 27% of its US sales via mobile payments, as consumers opt for contactless coffee. While there were efforts to provide banking through cell phones in the late 90s, the transition, around 2007, from cellphones to smartphones—with their expanded ...

First developed in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto—whose identity remains a mystery—as a public ledger for all bitcoin transactions, blockchain is now outshining the cryptocurrency it underpins as it offers banks and others the benefits of a distributed ledger, i.e., an ...